2004) 'Global Governance, Participation and the Public Sphere', Government and Opposition

First draft – please don’t quote Emanating from a deliberative theory of democracy we argue in this essay that the democratisation of global governance will ultimately depend upon the creation of a transnational public sphere. In this public sphere processes of political, administrative and judicial decision-making in international organisations are connected with national parliaments, organised, civil society, the mass media and the Internet, and hence with the stakeholders of global governance. The creation of such a public sphere in practice would require a high degree of transparency in international organisations, as well as their readiness to routinely respond to stakeholders’ concerns, e.g. in a ‘participatory arena ’ that reserve themselves the prerogatives to scrutinise policy choices. Moreover, we argue that civil society plays a key role in enhancing a broader public sphere by permeating the boundaries between the formal institutions of global governance and their global constituency. With respect to democratisation, transnational civil society has three particular tasks: exposing global rule-making to public scrutiny, bringing citizens ’ concerns on the agenda of international organisations, and empowering the most disadvantaged groups o